


Send Me On My Way

by crossingwinter



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, In which Theon and Jon are the same age because reasons, set in Beijing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-06
Updated: 2014-08-06
Packaged: 2018-02-11 23:52:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2087733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Jon Snow: Sam send help.</em>
</p><p>    <em>Samwell Tarly: What for?</em></p><p>      <em>Jon Snow: I have to tell Theon Greyjoy that I’ve slept with his sister.</em></p><p>        <em>Samwell Tarly: Point of order—did you sleep with his sister?</em></p><p>          <em>Jon Snow: Yes.  Twice now.  And we have what I’m assuming is a booty call later tonight.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Send Me On My Way

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vana/gifts).



> In some fics, I throw my feels at you. In this fic, it’s my China Feels. And my Crackship OTP of the day.

Jon had never known a headache this strong.   It wasn’t a throbbing headache, it wasn’t the sort that came from drinking too much, or not drinking enough, or just strange ew-I-have-a-headache feelings. It was deep in his soul, as though his head was hurting so much that the rest of him was hurting and exhausted.

_Samwell Tarly: How’s it going?_

Jon was sitting in his room, staring blankly at Sam’s grinning Skype avatar.  What the hell was Sam doing awake at this hour anyway?  It was five in the morning over there.

_Jon Snow: Oh thank god.  English._

_Samwell Tarly:  Haha. You did this to yourself._

_Jon Snow: Shut up.  Let me embrace the English.  Let it flow in my eyeballs and out my fingers._

_Samwell Tarly: Are you high?_

_Jon Snow: On English._

And that was it.  That was the end of it.

Jon had come to Beijing on a whim.  “There’s an exchange program,” Sam had suggested.  “You don’t have to speak Chinese or anything.  You just go.  You should go, Jon.  It’ll do you good.”

Sam had a way of making him do things he would ordinarily not do just by suggesting them. He wasn’t sure how, he wasn’t sure why, but Sam—not Robb, Grenn, Pyp, or Edd—could make him say “fuck it—I’ll go to China for a semester.”

He had his own room—thank god—though the dorm itself had obviously been built in the High Communist period, and was grey and bare.  The mattress was rock hard, but Jon didn’t care. Jon just cared that he had his computer, his room, and a haven where he could, for a moment, pretend that he could breathe deeply.  (You didn’t want to breathe deeply in Beijing.  He’d done that a few times, and at the end of the day had coughed up soot.)

He liked his classes well enough.  They weren’t exactly hard—except for Chinese, which he’d never taken.  But then again, he was so inundated with Chinese at this point that it wasn’t like it was even _that_ hard because he actually heard people say the things he learned in his classroom.  He used them himself, butchering the tones but pushing on because he knew that the man selling dumplings around the corner from the main gate wouldn’t speak English. And he got the gist, even if Jon butchered the tones.

Jon wished he had his cousins’ skill at Chinese.  Sansa spoke it flawlessly, to hear everyone say it, and Arya spoke it even better—if with a Shanghainese accent, which he half-expected her to be putting on just to show everyone that she could.  They’d been taking it for years, had started in middle school when you still could have an ear for that sort of thing. Jon had never had much of a musical ear, and he could hear the tones properly.  But he couldn’t really execute them properly.

On the bright side, he did have a mind for characters.  They were patterns, really, not too hard, once you knew how to look at them.  Or maybe he’d just always had a visual memory.  He wasn’t sure.  (Although fuck traditional characters—just fuck them.  No word should have that many lines.  And calligraphy?  Jon almost laughed at the concept of reading that.  Those weren’t words.  Those were loops.)

Most days, when Jon got back to his room, he logged into his skype account and chatted with whoever was there.  Most days, he spent hours by himself in his room, letting his head sink back into English, completely on his own.

* * *

He had a language partner as part of his program—a second year English student named Satin. Satin wasn’t his real Chinese name. His Chinese name was Gao Long (Tall Dragon—a funny name for a boy who was short and skinny and timid). Jon had no idea how he’d gotten the English name “Satin” which wasn’t a name at all, but he’d been perfectly cheerful when Jon had pointed that out. He was pretty cheerful in general, even when Jon got frustrated at his inability to communicate.

“I know that westerners are forward,” Satin said to him in heavily accented English, “and I know we’re supposed to speak in Chinese mostly.  But let’s say this—if there’s something that you don’t know how to say in Chinese, something important or something, ask it in English and I’ll answer.  It’s easier that way.”

But even though Satin had told him that, Jon felt guilty speaking in English with him, as much as he wanted to.  Even if Satin didn’t seem to mind, Jon did.  It felt strange, making Satin speak in another language when Jon was supposed to be the one doing that. 

And at the very least, Satin grinned broadly whenever he had no idea what the shit was coming out of Jon’s mouth.  He found it funny in a way that didn’t make Jon feel too bad—and that was sort of nice.

* * *

When Jon had started taking Spanish in middle school, he had been obsessed with Harry Potter. An orphan with dark hair who grew up to save the world?  Count him in. Add in the fact that Harry cared so intensely about doing the right thing, the way that Uncle Ned did…Jon had seen all the movies, and had even dressed up as Harry himself once or twice, going to midnight premiers with Robb.  He’d made Robb dress up as Ron because Robb had red hair and blue eyes. Robb hadn’t really liked it very much, but he’d complied.  When was Jon the center of attention, and Robb the sidekick?  That never happened.  So he let Jon have his day.

Jon hadn’t struggled with Spanish, per se, but it hadn’t been easy at first. But for his birthday, he’d gotten _Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal_ and everything had gotten easier all of a sudden.  He’d had his friends from the book all their on the page, and he knew what they were saying an that made it easier to wade into the experience of Spanish.

Reading _哈利_ _·_ _波特与魔法石_  was not so easy.  For one thing, he found himself looking up words every four seconds, doing his best to slide his finger over the trackpad of his laptop in a near enough imitation of the stroke order and almost always botching it; on the other hand, he spent a significant amount of time looking up characters that turned out to be phonetic transliteration—such as it could be called in Mandarin—of Vernon Dursley, or even some sort of magical spells.

It was misery in comparison.

But, he supposed it got him out of his room.  He found a table near the outdoor basketball courts and did his best to ignore the fact that his lungs went dry from pollution, and that the Chinese students were shouting at one another as they played.  It was peaceful to sit there and read, and think, and sink himself slowly into the familiar world of Harry Potter.

* * *

Robb was the hardest.

Jon could usually catch Arya online when he got up early before classes and she hadn’t gone to bed yet.  And Sam always seemed to be online—Jon suspected because Gilly was studying in Russia that term. Robb though—Robb was always coming and going, even at Jon’s most nocturnal moments.

_Robb Stark: Shit I’m o_ _ff to class._

_Robb Stark: I’m wiped and need to get to bed.  Talk to you soon, though, yeah?_

_Robb Stark: Fuck! Sorry—left my skype on while I was in the shower._

Jon didn’t think it would be quite so hard if Robb were just absent—if Robb were just completely inaccessible.  But his half-presence, the tantalizing yellow dot next to his name indicating that he was signed in, but not actually there…that was the worst. Because Robb was everything. Robb was the best friend that Jon could have ever asked for growing up.  Robb had paid attention to him, Robb had laughed at his jokes, Robb had passed him the ball in soccer practice when everyone thought that Jon was too slow to actually take the ball up the field.  Well—maybe not everyone.  Maybe it was just Theon who did that, but Theon did it loudly enough for everyone to think he was telling the truth.

He would do anything for Robb.  Hell, he considered it a true indication of his love for his cousin that he even put up with Theon Greyjoy in the first place, because the words ‘fucking annoying’ always came to mind when Jon thought of Theon.  But Theon was never that bad when Robb was around, and he and Jon had a tacit understanding that for Robb, they’d shelve their bullshit and there were times when they almost got along.

Robb listened to him, Robb cared—and not having Robb to vent at after a long day…

Sam was great, but Sam wasn’t the same.

* * *

In one of those hilarious twists of fate, the sort that Jon really wished didn’t actually happen outside of fiction, or maybe an interesting reality TV series, Theon was there. Theon Greyjoy was in Beijing. Theon Greyjoy was five subway stops away from him, going to a different university on a different exchange program.  Theon Greyjoy, who found him the way that a fruitfly found a stale banana.  Did bananas go stale?  Didn’t matter.  If Theon Greyjoy were a fruitfly, he would have found a stale banana.

“That’s never Jon Snow!” Theon grinned at him.  They were at a bar—some cramped and smoky bar down near Wudaokou and Jon had been trying in his best horrible Mandarin to explain to a student from BeiDa that he was American, that he was a student from MIT.  He thought that maybe she’d worked out that he was American, but that was probably because he couldn’t really speak Mandarin and was white. In fact, if the poor girl understood half of the words that were coming out of his mouth, he probably owed her at the very least dinner, at the very most four dinners that he had delivered to her so she didn’t have to put up with his very bad Chinese.

“Hey,” Jon replied, too stunned to think of anything else to say.  Of course he was here.  Of course Theon Greyjoy had found him in a random bar in Beijing.

“What are you doing here?  Oh—“ he burst into Chinese, and the girl that Jon had been trying to talk to smiled up at him. She replied animatedly, and Theon looked confused, then asked a question.  She answered.  He laughed and dove into another sentence, then turned to Jon.

“Lin Lirong thinks that you’re vampire from Massachusetts and you’re here to study poetry, so unless there’s something you’re not telling me…”

Jon blushed.

“That’s what I thought,” Theon reintroduced Jon to Xiao Lin, who giggled and blushed and proceeded to spend the rest of the evening with her eyes on Theon.

* * *

 

The thing about Theon was that he was annoying as fuck.  He always had been.  He always would be.  Jon didn’t think that there was a single thing short of extended torture that would change that.  And he’d known Theon most of his life because Theon and Robb were thick as thieves. Jon for example, had always been good about playing Risk with them because Risk was more fun with three people, and Theon came to see the Harry Potter movies with him and Robb—though he refused to dress up.   They didn’t really interact with one another in the real world.

Except, apparently, in Beijing.

* * *

 

Gone were the afternoons spent on skype, relishing the privacy of his own head and the quiet of his own room.  Gone were afternoons spent in the comforting familiarity of Hogwarts. Gone were the relaxed dinners with Satin and his group of friends who talked about Japanese anime and argued about which printing house had the best Manga series. Most days now, Jon ended up meeting Theon at Wudaokou for a meal, or a walk, or visiting the Western Style mall that they mostly went to to be reminded of home.  And to get good Korean food.  There was good Korean food there. 

Every time they went somewhere, it ended up with Theon meeting girls.  Jon didn’t know how he always had girls on him, or maybe he had some sort of magnet that he wore under his clothes, but smiling Chinese students would always show up out of nowhere and he would always know them.  He’d launch into flawless Chinese (he’d taken the same middle school classes that Arya and Sansa had taken, so of course his Chinese sounded fluid.  Why had Jon taken Spanish?  Or, more importantly, why wasn’t Jon in Chile, or Nicaragua, or—fuck it, even if Spain bugged the shit out of him—Madrid?) and usually the girls would join them.  They’d try to talk with Jon.  Sometimes, Jon would even try to talk back.  And, if he couldn’t they’d switch to English that was nearly as good as Jon’s Chinese. 

Usually, Jon would walk along with them, or sit sullenly, and wonder why he even bothered coming along if Theon was just there, showing off.  Surely it wouldn’t be worse to just be on his computer skyping with Sam or Arya, would it?  And yet, he always came, because if he couldn’t have Robb over skype, maybe he could get a taste of him through time spent with Theon.

* * *

 

He knew things weren’t right when even Harry Potter wasn’t filling him with contentment. Staring at pictograms on a page—a whole page full of characters, knowing that the story was _right there_ , but frustratingly inaccessible—it was more painful than Jon could have imagined.  It took him over three weeks to read the first chapter, and by the time he was done, he wondered if he could even bring himself to read the book in English anymore.

How had this happened?  How had Chinese managed to ruin his one connection to home—the one thing that was supposed to provide him solace?

* * *

 

Theon was charming. So very charming. And always the life of the party. When he dragged Jon one evening to Sanlitun for Karaoke, he bought a bottle of baijiu for six kuai on the street and even though Jon was half-convinced that if they drank it, they’d probably _literally_ go blind, Theon didn’t care and downed most of the bottle.  And still sang in tune when he chose “Stand By Me”.

“They think you’re cute, you know,” Theon slurred at him as one girl sang a Taiwanese pop song that Jon had never heard before.  “Surly and serious and mysterious.”

“Yeah…well…”

“The best way to learn Chinese is to get a Chinese girlfriend, Jon,” Theon said.

“Is that how you did it?”

Theon winked. “After a fashion. 谁愿意跟我一起唱首歌？” And the girls had all responded enthusiastically, and a moment later, Theon and three of them were singing another Taiwanese pop song Jon had never heard.

* * *

 

It was fine, he supposed.  Given that he had nothing better to do.  Homework was a joke.  And he didn’t really know anyone else besides Satin, and homework for the actual, non-exchange students _wasn’t_ a joke, so he couldn’t just find them all the time, even if he wanted to.  There were some nice looking students on his floor, and sometimes he played card games with them, but most of the time, they let him be and he let them be.  At least with Theon, he was able to get out some.

* * *

 

“My sister is in Beijing for a few weeks on a business trip.  Want to get dinner with us?”  Theon’s tone was neutral.  It was, to Jon’s recollection, the first time that he had asked Jon to do anything that wasn’t a statement: “You must come with me,” or “Obviously you are coming.”  This was a question. And Jon blinked at it.

Of course he knew that Theon had an older sister. She was just older enough that they’d never really crossed paths in school.  Theon didn’t talk about her much, and Jon had never been one to press Theon about his life.  That was what Robb was for.  But Theon’s sister was in Beijing and Theon wanted to grab dinner with her.

So Jon agreed.

* * *

 

He knew she was Theon’s sister without having to be told.  Asha had the same dark hair, the same tawny eyes, and the same cocky expression on her face and for a moment, Jon wondered what the exact hell he had gotten himself into.

“You’re Jon?” she asked.  She didn’t stand up, though she did look up from the menu.

“Hi. Nice to meet you,” he extended his hand, which she shook with a grip that felt like it could probably break an iron pole in half.

“And you,” she said. “Theon’s late, I take it?”

“He usually is,” Jon replied.  She snorted.

“It’s nice to know that he’s the same everywhere he goes, I suppose.”  There was a curl to her lip, something playful. “He’s probably fixing his hair.”

“I’d imagine so,” Jon replied. “Or maybe making sure that his shirt matches his pants.”

“Hey—” Asha said, a broad and slightly-mocking grin on her face, “That’s important, ok? People notice that sort of thing.”

Jon glanced down. He was wearing black pants and a white button down.  “How do I shape up?” he asked.

“You look like a waiter,” she shrugged.  “But then again, I like a man in uniform—whatever that uniform might be.”

“Pretty sure that that doesn’t usually reflect waiters.  Isn’t that like…cops, and soldiers, and firemen, or something?”

“Oh, don’t think too hard,” Asha grinned.  She flagged a waiter and began speaking in brisk Mandarin that sounded perfect to Jon’s untrained ear.  The waiter nodded and took the menu from her hands.  “I ordered,” she explained.  “I’m not waiting for Theon to finish putting gel in his hair.  It’s been a long day, and I haven’t had good Peking Duck in ages.”

“Do you come here often?”  Jon asked.

“Here Beijing or here this restaurant?” she asked. 

“Both, I suppose.”

“About twice a year, and as often as I can,” she said.  “I know you can get good Peking Duck in New York, but it’s not the same. And there he is, my bouncing baby brother!” Asha reached out a hand and pinched Theon’s cheek as he bent down to kiss hers.  “I assume that you had trouble finding a cab?”

“Yeah. That’s it,” Theon said absentmindedly. “You’ve met Jon, then?”

“Yes. You didn’t tell me he was quite as attractive as he is,” Asha teased.  Jon felt himself blushing.  “Also modest.  Oh look—I’ve gone and shocked both of you.  Who would have known that I was having dinner with a pair of lily-livered maids.”

“Asha—my friends are off-limits,” Theon whined.  Jon concealed a grin.

“Theon—you really wish that were true, don’t you?” she said, transitioning into a baby voice as she did so.  “You really wish I always didn’t get whatever I wanted.”

* * *

 

“You know I meant it when I said you were attractive,” Asha said as they left the restaurant. Theon had ducked out ahead of them—(“friends in Houhai. You in, Jon?” “No. I’m far too tired. Thanks though.”)—and Jon was hailing Asha a cab.  He looked up at her.  She made him nervous. He couldn’t quite place why.

“Oh, don’t look like a deer in the headlights.  I’m just making a comment.  You’re a fine looking boy.”

“I’m not a boy,” Jon said, fully aware that saying something like that made him sound not only like a “boy” but one aged about seven.

Asha laughed. “Is that so?  Are you all man, then?”  She leaned in, and Jon’s breath hitched. “Prove it.”

* * *

 

He would, and this he knew for a fact, never be able to look at Theon Greyjoy in the face ever again. Never.  Not once.  Not ever.  Never never never. Because if he looked Theon Greyjoy in the face (and this was why he couldn’t) he would, invariably, either have to hide the fact that he’d had sex with his sister, or confess it—neither of which he particularly wanted to do.  So he decided that he wouldn’t see Theon again.  Because that had a number of additional benefits as well—not least that he would be able to have some time alone again…and spend more time in Asha’s company, which he enjoyed much more than he enjoyed Theon’s.

They had gone back to Asha’s hotel room—a nice hotel, a business hotel near Tiananmen, and Asha had teased him every time he’d blushed on the elevator ride up to her room. She’d shed the dress she was wearing within about three seconds of entering the room and Jon got to watch her prance around in her underwear, grabbing a couple of beers for them, before sitting on the bed and instructing him that he had too many clothes on. She’d promptly mocked him for then taking off his clothes in a way that implied he’d never put on a show for a girl before.

“The show’s half the fun, Jon.  Don’t look like you’re not enjoying it. Be confident.  You’re definitely getting laid, so what’s the point?”

But he didn’t really understand what she meant, and it felt so unbelievably awkward to just be taking off his clothes in the middle of a decently lit hotel room in the middle of Beijing, in front of a woman who (more importantly) had the same wide grin as Theon Greyjoy. 

When he stood there in just his boxers, Asha raised her eyebrows.

“Well?”

“You’re still in your underwear!” he yelped.

“Oh Jon, if you don’t show me yours, what on earth makes you think I’m going to show you mine?” she had replied and he’d divested himself of the offending article.  She’d smiled approvingly and handed him his beer, patting a spot on the bed next to her.

It didn’t really matter how things had proceeded from there.  What mattered was that within an hour of ditching Theon, Jon was having sex with his sister and Jon would never be able to look him in the face again.  And he was thoroughly ok with that.

* * *

 

Jon was easily the worst student in his Chinese class.  Not that he hadn’t improved of course—there was no way not to have improved when Chinese bled into his eyes and ears always, and the only moments where it didn’t were the ones where he was lying flat on his back, watching episodes of _Parks and Recreation_ on his laptop, which he had downloaded before coming to.  There was something comforting about Ron Swanson, he decided. That mustache, maybe, or the way nothing but the important stuff seemed to phase him.  Jon couldn’t place him.  Imagining Ron Swanson in China was hilarious. On the one hand—government oversight; on the other hand meat in everything.

In any case—he was definitely the worst in his class.  There were five of them—two German girls, a boy from Saudi Arabia who spoke less than Jon did, but who spoke more correctly, and a blond Australian who Jon only needed to clap eyes on once to know that they would have nothing in common.  The Australian didn’t seem to care though.  He just seemed to go with the flow and before long he and the two German girls were thick as thieves.  The funny thing was that Jon didn’t actually know any of their real names—he just knew them as they were in his Chinese class—Luo Xinghui and Li Lerui from Germany, Gao Qiang from Australia, and Ma Junliang from Saudi Arabia.  He was quite confident they didn’t know his name either. So he couldn’t quite bring himself to care.

He knew that Xinghui, Lerui, and Gao Qiang usually went out together to dance clubs. He knew this because he heard them talking about it in their increasingly fluid Chinese, laughing and giggling and talking about their shenanigans.

Jon wondered if his Chinese wasn’t improving because he spent most of his free time speaking English with Theon and _Parks and Rec_.

* * *

 

But, like a fruitfly over a discarded apple core, Theon found him again.  And, in his most typical Theon way, was so determined to spend time with Jon that he had no choice but to suck it up, bite his tongue, and go with him to an acrobatics show.

“Why’d you end up taking Chinese, then?” Theon asked.  They were in a completely packed subway going from near Tiananmen to a club that Theon had heard to try in Eastern Beijing.

“I didn’t,” Jon said.

“So you just came here without speaking any of the language?”  Theon looked mildly aghast, his brown eyes wide and his mouth slightly open.

“Yeah.”

“That’s brave of you,” Theon said at last.  “I don’t think I would ever have done something like that.”

“It’s been…fine.” Jon didn’t know how to say what it really was.  That his head hurt, that he was lonely, that he hated not understanding more than half of what was going on around him, that he didn’t want to even get out of bed sometimes because it hurt his head just to step outside, that his lungs felt like he’d smoked eight packs of cigarettes a day for the past nine years, that his stomach sometimes felt like it was attacking the rest of his body because sometimes the food just wasn’t good to your stomach, and that—even when he did have emails from home—Sam, or Edd, or Robb—they were never long and never could replace the gross feeling that he’d never be able to catch up on the times he was missing, the drunken escapades of Grenn and Pyp’s tight smile when you asked him how his exam reviews were going.

Theon laughed and Jon gritted his teeth.  “You’re always so much better at everything, aren’t you?  Flying halfway around the world to be in a place where you don’t speak the language and don’t know anyone besides little old me—fine. No big deal.  I’m Jon Snow.  I am intrepid and brave.”

“Yeah—well. I guess,” Jon said. He looked out of the subway window to watch glittering television screens showing him news items from around China.  He couldn’t understand them all, but he recognized the Shanghai skyline, and saw a man in a police uniform speaking into a microphone.

“You’re a man of many words,” shrugged Theon.

“Yep.”

Theon rolled his eyes and pulled out his phone.

“Asha wants to know if we want to go to the Forbidden City tomorrow.  She hasn’t been in years and doesn’t mind going on her own, but likes making fun of how ridiculously touristy I am.”

Jon felt his heart thump a little harder against his ribcage.  “Sure.  Sounds fine.”

“Always fine with you, isn’t it?  The world is always dandy.”

“Would you prefer I said dandy?”

Theon shrugged. “I don’t know. Might make for a nice change.”

Jon bit his tongue, knowing damn well that it wouldn’t make that much of a difference. But then again, that was Theon, and he really should have learned a long time ago not to let Theon get under his skin.

* * *

 

“Your handwriting is improving,” Satin said with a smile.  “You look like you’re…six years old now.”

Jon gave him a half-hearted smile.  “Thanks, I guess.”

“You know, that’s a big deal.  I know a lot of foreigners who don’t even bother with trying to improve their handwriting. They write like drunk four-year-olds, or they just type everything.”

“I guess. I mean…typing is easier. Especially with pinyin inputs.” Jon thanked the stars for the pinyin inputs on his laptop.  Otherwise he’d probably have done something drastic because there was no way he could write his increasingly long homework responses (the last one had been two-hundred characters!) by hand.  And honestly—who would want to read them if he did? He imagined his teachers would cry. Or drink and laugh, the way that Satin did sometimes.

“Yes, I suppose,” shrugged Satin.  “But when you’re typing, do you pronounce the words in Chinese in your head? Or do you pronounce them in English?”

“What do you mean by that?” Jon asked.  

Satin frowned and bobbed his head slightly.  “Like…do you pronounce qs as “kwa”s or as “tchus”?”

“’tchus’?” Jon said.  That was what he was supposed to do, wasn’t it?  That was how they were pronounced in Chinese.  It wasn’t like he was just thinking the English pronunciation as he typed.  That would be weird. That would make his head hurt…and besides, he wasn’t entirely sure that he could look at pinyin and pronounce them in English.  That just…no. He’d broken that habit, he supposed. Even a picture that Sam had found on the internet and sent him that read “Wolves Xing” he misread because he couldn’t see ‘xing’ and thing ‘crossing’ because it wasn’t pronounced that way—it was pronounced 兴 or 星 or 行.

Satin was nodding approvingly.  “Good. You’re beginning to settle a bit. That’s a good thing. You may be able to feel comfortable before you leave.”

That threw Jon for a moment.  Feeling comfortable in Chinese?  That was beyond his own expectations.  But if Satin thought he could…

* * *

 

They met Asha in front of the main gate of the Forbidden City.  She was taking snapchats of the portrait of Mao and drawing curly mustaches on them.    Theon crept up behind her and then jumped, grabbing hold of her shoulders and shouting, “Hello Asha!” 

She didn’t miss a beat.  She bent her knees and tucked back, throwing off his balance so that he ended up on the ground with an “ow” and a scowl.  “Come on now,” she said, “You know better than to try that.”

“One day I’ll get you,” he snapped

She smirked and turned to Jon, who was grinning.  Her eyes flickered from his grin to his crotch and he felt his face turn the same shade of red as the walls of the Palace.  Her smirk grew even more pronounced.

The sky was hazy and grey and Jon coughed a few times as they climbed stairs and poked their heads through the doorways into rooms that were probably the size of the house that Jon had grown up in.  They couldn’t go all the way inside—it was protected by UNESCO, or something like that, but from afar he saw ornate wall decorations and paintings filling rooms largely devoid of furniture.

“Do you ever just feel astounded by this place?” he asked Theon as they crossed a courtyard.

“I guess,” Theon said. 

“It’s just so immense, and so old,” Jon tried.

“True,” shrugged Theon, “But it’s not how things are now.”

“It’s how they were, though.”

“How much does it matter how they were?” It wasn’t really a question, and Jon saw Asha roll her eyes.

“Please don’t tell me that you’re here just because you saw it in _Mulan_ ,” she said.

“So? What’s wrong with that? That movie was a part of my childhood!” Theon yelped.

“Well, for one, that movie is a pretty bad interpretation both of _The Song of Mulan_ and Imperial China, you know that right?”

“So—it’s the suspension of disbelief and whatnot.  That’s not so bad.  It’s not like the other Disney movies were perfect representations of Hans Christian Anderson or whatever,” Theon said.

“What do you know about German history?” Asha asked, “About France?  Denmark?  Europe generally?  When you look at those movies, you know they aren’t accurate.  How many people do you think actually believe that _Mulan_ is a perfect historical representation?”

“It’s a kid’s movie. And I’ve studied Chinese history, thank you very much.”

“And you are standing in one of the last vestiges of Imperial China—built during the Ming Dynasty— _after_ when _Mulan_ is set, I might add—and you don’t really care about what it’s presence here represents because you’re too busy doing impressions of Mulan’s roof-fight with Shan Yu.”

“I don’t have to care,” Theon said, and, for a moment, Jon felt bad for him with the way that Asha was glaring at him.

“No,” she agreed quietly.  “You don’t. You don’t have to do anything.”

“So now you’re trying to guilt me into it,” snapped Theon.

“I just gave you information.  What you do with it is on you, baby brother,” Asha replied coolly. 

“I care about this place just as much as you do.  And I can do it how I like.”

“You keep telling yourself that,” Asha said.

Theon’s jaw was jutting forward, and he looked very much like he would like to respond, but knew that it wouldn’t help anything at all.  So instead, he just moved away from them, striking up a casual conversation with some American Tourists and offering to show them around the Palace.

“You think I was harsh?” Asha asked Jon.  She wasn’t looking at him—she was fixing the length of the strap on her purse.

“No—not really,” Jon said slowly.

Asha snorted. “Are you just being a suck-up?”

“No. I just…I don’t know, I’m not used to seeing people argue with Theon.”

“You don’t argue with him?”

“Not usually. I mean, he gets on my nerves sometimes, but we never openly fought.”

“He’s my little brother.  I have the right to expect better of him,” Asha said, looking at him with Theon’s eyes—only far more seriously than Theon ever would.

“And I just wish that I could see what Robb sees in him,” Jon replied evenly.

“You don’t like him?” Asha asked, her eyes narrowing.

“I don’t dislike him. But he’s hard to like.”

Asha sighed. “Ain’t that the truth. But I love him anyway.”

* * *

 

_Jon Snow: Sam send help._

_Samwell Tarly: What for?_

_Jon Snow: I have to tell Theon Greyjoy that I’ve slept with his sister._

_Samwell Tarly: Point of order—did you sleep with his sister?_

_Jon Snow: Yes.  Twice now. And we have what I’m assuming is a booty call later tonight._

_Samwell Tarly: Ok proceed._

_Jon Snow: How do you do something like that?_

_Samwell Tarly: I have no idea._

_Jon Snow: Nor do I.  I’m not looking for experience.  I don’t know anyone who’s slept with a friend’s sister.  I’m looking for creativity.  Imagination.  Sam, what do I do?_

_Samwell Tarly: Is it necessary that you do this?_

_Jon Snow: Probably.  It’s the right thing to do, isn’t it?  I’ve spent the past three times I’ve seen Theon with a pained expression on my face, and I think he assumes I’m getting worse at Chinese._

_Samwell Tarly: Are you getting worse at Chinese?_

_Jon Snow: Believe it or not, I think I might actually be getting better. But besides the point._

_Samwell Tarly: That’s good at least._

_Samwell Tarly: Is the sex good?_

_Jon Snow: Very._

_Samwell Tarly: So you’re not necessarily just going to stop any time soon, are you?_

_Jon Snow: I mean, if she loses interest, yeah.  But I’m enjoying it._

_Samwell Tarly: So it’s not just that you’ve banged Theon’s sister, it’s that you have a continued desire to bang her._

_Jon Snow: I thought we’d established this._

_Samwell Tarly: I’m just making sure that I have all the requisite information._

_Jon Snow: Any conclusions?_

_Samwell Tarly: Nope._

_Jon Snow: I’m so screwed._

_Samwell Tarly: Well, yes.  That’s what’s causing this whole mess, isn’t it?_

_Jon Snow: You’re no help._

_Samwell Tarly: I have no idea why you thought I would be._

* * *

 

The thing about Asha was that she was great—far better than great.  She was incredible.  She was unlike anything or anyone Jon had ever met.

She was the sort to take Jon gambling and use him as her arm candy, sitting smoking with hardened middle-aged Chinese men with lots of tattoos on their arms in back-alley bars, a cigarette hanging lazily between her teeth and a profanity that Jon could never understand ready at hand.  Asha was also the type to show up at the gates of the university wearing the sleekest of business suits and take him out to lunch at a fancy restaurant a few blocks away, the epitome of the classy American business woman. Everyone always stared at him and Asha. He was sure that it was just “the stare” but even so, he felt like it was something more—like each gaze carried some sort of accusation.  “ _She’s older than you,_ ” the eyes seemed to say, “ _She’s your friend’s sister,” “She’s too good for you._ ”

He hadn’t told Theon—he hadn’t even told Robb.  He was thinking of telling Arya, though he knew that she was too young to understand the complexities of it.  “What’s there to understand?” she would ask him over skype, “It’s sex. And I imagine it’s good, but even if it’s not, it’s sex.”  But it was more than sex.  It was more even than the romantic dreamings of a college student who hadn’t had a serious girlfriend in far too long.  It was a cure to his loneliness, someone who paid attention to him—really to him—when no one else in the world seemed to.

* * *

 

Asha took him to an abandoned factory lot that had been turned into a modern art gallery called 798. There were paintings on the walls, spray-painted phrases about the communist party, empty souls, canisters, plants growing out of the abandoned buildings and colors unlike any that Jon had seen in Beijing.  “The name’s a pun,” Asha had explained.  “It’s a homonym for being a barfly.”

Jon had nodded, pretending that he knew the phrase that she was referring to.  It was nice being out with her without Theon and in a place that Theon wouldn’t ever show up because Theon was not one for art galleries, even if they were cool post-Communist art galleries.  Asha and Jon didn’t have to pretend not to flirt, pretend not to kiss.  Asha often had her fingers looped in Jon’s belt, dragging him this way and that, translating the characters on the wall that he couldn’t understand.

She bought him an Obamao t-shirt, (“It’s a positive comparison here, believe it or not. The Chairman is still well-loved.”) and took lots of dorky pictures of him on her iPhone, staring moodily at the art and pretending not to care about it.  It was strange being in his head while out with Asha. She was not one for silence, not one for stillness.  She was constantly murmuring things to him—explanations, analyses, sex things to try later—whatever crossed her mind. 

And when they were done, she found a hole-in-the-wall restaurant nearby and they got very oily but very delicious food.

“There are two kinds of Chinese food,” Asha explained as she picked at Jon’s eggs and tomato with her chopsticks.  “Really high quality in fancy shmancy restaurants like where we went when we first met—and the kind that’s really oily and cheap and may well give you food poisoning but is just so _damn good_.”

Jon wanted to point out to her that that was true of everywhere in the world, but when he opened his mouth, she popped a piece of beef into his mouth and he coughed violently while she giggled. 

“Tasty though,” she winked.  Jon kicked her under the table, and she leaned forward and kissed him.

* * *

 

It was Satin’s birthday, and his friends invited Jon along.  They were going to take him to Sanlitun and get him just about as drunk as they could manage.  They might even, Hong Youlin told him with a gleam in his eye, McDonalds all night, if they wanted to. 

Jon had never been out all night without another English speaker.  And sure, Satin spoke English to some extent, and Hong Youlin did too, and Zhao Qingde spoke a little bit of Spanish that was almost incomprehensible to Jon, but he knew that they probably wouldn’t. If he had learned anything while out drunk with Theon, it was that drunken Chinese students didn’t like speaking English—or maybe those were just Theon’s friends.  He could never tell. 

So they took a black cab across the city, bought Satin his dinner (Jon tried to pay—he really did, but Hong Youlin had given cash to the waiter up front and insisted that it be used to pay for the meal) and then wandered through the city.

The air was clear that night, and Jon could see the moon.  He loved it, stared at it, knowing that it was the same moon that shone out of his bedroom window back home, and that twelve hours ago, twelve hours from now, it would be shining over Arya, and Bran, and Robb, and Sam, and even Ghost who was probably fat now because Arya always overfed him.

“You like the moon?” Satin asked him in Chinese.  

Jon nodded. “Very pretty,” he said. “Too pretty.”  He was pleased with the statement—it was both true and simple enough that he could say it without causing himself syntactical trouble.

Satin grinned at him. “There’s a story of a man who saw the moon’s reflection in a pond.” Satin made a rather ridiculous hand gesture to make sure that Jon understood, “He went down to kiss it and drowned himself.”

“That’s sad,” Jon said. _Morbid_ was the word he was looking for, but he had _no_ idea how to say that.

“I know. There’s lots of sad things in stories, aren’t there?” Satin grinned.  “Stories aren’t meant to be happy—that’s what my father always says.” The grin faded, and a distant look crossed the boy’s face. 

“That’s not true,” Jon said.  He could think of plenty of happy stories, ones his uncle had told him growing up, and ones he had read.  “At the very least, _Harry Potter_ is happy,” he said.

Satin smiled again, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes, and Jon wished he could ask, but the biggest problem—the hardest problem in Chinese was the fact that he still spoke body language fluently while having no concept of how to put words to what he saw. Not that it mattered, of course. He’d probably be being rude. Jon never knew when he was being rude.  Theon didn’t care, and girls found it charming, exotic, brave, western, but Jon didn’t ever really think that was him.  He wasn’t exotic, and he wasn’t entirely convinced he was brave. 

“Why does your father say that?” he asked in English.

Satin replied in English, his voice distant.  “My father was a teacher during the Cultural Revolution.”

At that precise moment, Zhao Qingde showed up with shot glasses and some of the cheap white liquor that Theon bought on the street for ten kuai and he poured them all shots.

“Empty your glass!” he called, raising his shot glass to clink against theirs, and they all downed the liquor.  It burned down Jon’s throat and he coughed, blinking back tears.  He saw Satin reaching for the bottle to pour himself another glass, and wished he hadn’t said a word.

* * *

 

“You were allowed to ask, you know,” Asha said.

They were curled up in her hotel room and his head was resting on her stomach.  She was weaving her fingers through his hair and he, in that moment, knew why Ghost always wanted his head scratched. There was something so hypnotically pleasant about having fingers rubbing against his scalp, lightly teasing away tension that he hadn’t realized had been there.

“It was his birthday though.  I feel like I shat on it.”

“Well, you probably did, but it sounds like you all had a fun night anyway,” she said.

They had. Jon hadn’t been that drunk in a long while—probably not since Freshman year.  He didn’t drink so much with Theon, usually because he had to make sure that Theon got back to his dorm safely.  But with the prospect of a night completely out, and with McDonalds fries and ice cream at the end of it while they waited for the dorms to open back up, Jon had gotten completely trashed.  He’d drunk more of the white alcohol than any of his friends, and had even bought them all a second bottle. He’d sung Queen at the top of his lungs while it had played in a bar, he’d even flirted briefly with a Chinese girl who had been entranced by his eye color.  (Grey, it seemed, was even more attractive than blue, at least to her; this was something Jon had never thought about, because the girls that he usually met while out flocked to Theon).  He’d actually said things intelligently in Chinese while drunk, and he and Zhao Qing had taken turns haranguing people in bad Spanish, just for laughs.  He knew he was disorderly, he knew that he was a spectacle, but he didn’t care, because at some point during the evening—at least, to the best of his recollection—Satin had been smiling again.

“I did,” he agreed. “Still, though. You know what I mean?”

“I do,” she said, her fingers stilling for a moment.  “It’s a hard thing to address.  It’s hard to talk about.  Does that mean we ignore it? I know I can’t.  I think about it too much, probably.”

“It’s weird to think of a place eating itself alive,” Jon said.

“And then having to put itself back together,” Asha sighed.  “China’s been complicated before we even understood what complicated meant.  And, if they’d done what the West would have, they could have conquered the world about a thousand years ago.  Fuck, they practically invented everything we live by— _including_ capitalism.”

“I didn’t know that,” Jon said.

“Yeah—the West doesn’t like studying anywhere that’s not the West.  It makes us feel guilty for jacking everyone’s shit.”

“Says the international businesswoman,” Jon teased.  He felt her hands tighten in his hair.

“Look—no matter what the world fucking thinks, there’s no fucking easy fucking fix for China’s fucking fucked upness, ok?  If there were, it would have happened.  Don’t fucking blame shit on the business sector, ok?”

“Aren’t there people who try and kill themselves in factories?” Jon asked.

“Yes.” Asha’s voice was hard. “There are.”

“And doesn’t that make you sick?”  He did sit up now, twisting to look at her. 

“You’ll notice that I don’t work in manufacturing,” she said coolly.  “There’s a reason that China keeps the Yuan down, there’s a reason that those manufacturers take those jobs, there’s a reason that you find migrant workers who leave their kids behind with their parents to live illegally in cities that won’t acknowledge or support them. There’s no easy fix for China. The best we can do is keep on trying.  And if you believe the bullshit grand-standing that happens during presidential elections—the ‘I’m going to make China do shit,’ read a fucking book.”

“Yeah, well, how are they going to actually make China do anything?  They aren’t in charge of the fucking world,” Jon murmured in what he hoped was a soothing voice.

Asha rolled her eyes. “Thank god.  We’re no spring picnic ourselves.  We’re the biggest fucking megalomaniacs on the planet.” She pushed down on his head gently and he went back to lying on her stomach, her fingers weaving through his hair again.   They fell asleep like that, her fingers laced through his curls, and when Asha’s alarm went off the next morning and she kicked him out of her room, Jon wondered exactly what Asha really thought about what she did here.

* * *

 

_Arya Stark: Can I ask you something?_

_Jon Snow: Shoot._

_Arya Stark: How do you ask out someone that’s older than you?_  

Jon almost burst out laughing.

_Jon Snow: I’m not the one to ask about that.  Try Robb._

_Arya Stark: You are, actually.  You date older women.  And I’m not an idiot.  If I tell Robb, he’ll find out who it is and threaten to skin them.  I’ll probably loose Grey Wind on him just to prove the point._

_Jon Snow: Well, I have never actually asked out someone older than me, but my understanding is that age shouldn’t really matter in that sort of thing?_

He thought, _I didn’t do the asking—she told me to take off my clothes._ But that was not something he was going to tell Arya.  _If_ he told Arya—and he still wasn’t convinced that he would—it would be on his terms, not while she was soliciting dating advice.

_Arya Stark: Yeah…That’s what Sansa said._

_Jon Snow: You went to Sansa before me?  I’m shocked._

_Arya Stark: Yeah, well, you’re never on Skype when I need you anymore. I assume you’re just out having a life at last._

_Jon Snow: That’s one way to put it, sure._

_Arya Stark: I mean, Sansa asked her guy out and he’s older than her._

_Jon Snow: Sansa’s dating someone?_

_Arya Stark: Yeah.  She won’t tell anyone who it is though.  I just know he’s older than her because they go to bars sometime and he gets her in even though she’s not twenty-one yet._

_Jon Snow: I don’t know if I approve of any of this._

_Arya Stark: Robb’s livid.  Which I imagine is partially why Sansa won’t tell anyone anything about it._

_Jon Snow: I think she understands that we have the right to be worried._

_Arya Stark: Yeah.  But she’ll just say she’s a big girl who can take care of herself.  And you know, at this point, I think she might be._

_Jon Snow: Fair.  What’s your guy’s name?  I won’t tell Robb._

_Arya Stark: Nice fucking try. I know you can’t keep secrets from Robb._

_Jon Snow: Watch your language.  And yes I can._

_Arya Stark: When have you ever?_

_Jon Snow: All the time._

He almost typed _Asha_ , but didn’t. Because Robb was not the only one he could keep a secret from. 

_Arya Stark:  Yeah—well. Not saying a thing. Not until I’ve sorted it all out._

_Jon Snow: I find it hilarious that everyone in the family doesn’t ever want to tell each other about romantic aspirations._

_Arya Stark: I think we’re all just dreading when Rickon starts dating._

_Jon Snow: That is the fairest point ever made by anyone ever._

* * *

 

Theon had a bruise over his left eye when Jon saw him next.

“What happened there?” he asked, nodding at the bruise.

“Got into a fight at a bar.  Not a big deal,” Theon replied nonchalantly. “Apparently some guy didn’t like me talking to his sister.”

“No offense, Theon, but I wouldn’t want you anywhere near my sisters.  If I had them.  So we’ll go with cousins, shall we?” Jon said, and they started walking.  They were going shopping today—beginning the quest for holiday presents, and Jon needed better hagglers with him before braving the Silk Street Market.  And the Gods had never put better hagglers on this earth than Asha and Theon Greyjoy.

“I wouldn’t mind if you banged my sister,” Theon whined.

“That so?” Asha had strode up behind him.  “I thought your friends were ‘off-limits’, but if that’s not the case…” She patted Jon’s ass and he stiffened.

“As if he’d have the balls to bang you,” Theon teased, and Jon did his best to look affronted, because Theon still didn’t know.  Otherwise, he would crack the broad grin that was threatening to take over his face.  “He’s probably quite the pussycat in bed.  Can’t imagine him taking you.  You’d probably tie him up and do things to him.  Which—hey, whatever floats your boat, Jon.”

Jon’s face was scarlet.  “Oh, look at him, Theon.  I think we’ve found his weak point.  Well then, would you take me to bed?” There was laughter in Asha’s eyes and Jon couldn’t look away, but also wanted to look anywhere else.

“I will take that silence as a yes,” Theon said.  “Well, you have my blessing—largely because she’d chew you up and spit you out.”

“Undoubtedly,” Asha smirked.  She looped her arms through each of theirs and they stepped into the building.

Stalls crammed the aisles and there were vendors calling out brand names in broken English, French, German.  Jon saw every t-shirt imaginable, in every color imaginable and could already tell that he was going to spend far more money than he wanted.  “God, I forget what a tourist trap this is,” said Asha, reaching out lazily to look at a handbag. 

“Well, it’ll get everything done,” said Theon.  Then a look of elation crossed his face and he reached a hand out and tugged a t-shirt from a rack and tossed it at Jon.  “For Robb.  You know I’m right.”

It was a white shirt, with the legend “I ♥ BJ” splayed across it.  Jon burst out laughing.

“Oh, Aunt Cat will go ballistic.”

“I know. Worth overpaying just for that,” Theon said, paying the vendor without even trying to haggle. “And the asshole will wear it, too.”

“I’m surprised you don’t have one,” Jon said, elbowing Theon.

“Oh, he does,” Asha said, “I get him one of a different color every time I come here.”

“I was thinking of asking Sansa to quilt them for me,” Theon said happily.  “Because, you know, having a blanket of them would prove very useful when I take the ladies home.”

“I suppose subtlety has never been your strong suit,” Jon said.

“As if it’s been yours,” snorted Theon.  Asha winked at him over Theon’s shoulder and he blushed again.  “See?  You know _exactly_ what I mean!” Theon said, clapping him on the shoulder. 

Asha mouthed “Weak,” at him with another wink.

“I’m better at it than you,” Jon replied, slightly stung.

“I won’t deny that, I suppose,” Theon said, “You certainly try to be classy about it. But come on, everyone knew when you started nailing Ygritte.”

“So?” Jon asked, not looking at Asha.

“So,” said Theon, “You were like a sneaky puppy with a new toy.  And I don’t suppose it helped that she definitely didn’t want to keep you a secret.”

“No,” Jon replied, remembering quickies in bathrooms and handjobs under the table while at dinner with friends.  “She definitely didn’t.”

“Who’s Ygritte?” Asha asked, arching her eyebrows.  She wasn’t looking at Jon, but rather at a high-necked shirt with a sequined phoenix on it.

“Jon’s ex,” Theon said lightly.  “Smoking hot, a couple years older than us, firecracker, et cetera.  Popped Jon’s cherry and was quite public about that.” He went in to look at some jade hair pieces lightly touching each of them and then asking the vendor how much they cost in English.  (“Always start in English,” Theon had told him, “Because when you switch to Chinese, they get caught off-guard and know you can’t be fucked with.”  Jon was very bad at following that advice—largely because he still didn’t feel comfortable enough to switch to Chinese.)

“Sounds like a keeper.  What happened?”

“Philosophical differences,” said Jon shortly.  Asha cocked her head, waiting, and he grimaced. “She was very political. And I was too—but never enough for her.  So it ended. Not too nicely.”

“Sorry,” said Asha. She didn’t sound sorry at all. Jon pinched her ass and she bit back a squeak.

* * *

 

“So you have a thing for older women?” Asha as she swung open the door.  She had pretended to peel off and when Jon had gotten to Xizhimen, he had taken a cab to her hotel instead of finishing the subway trek back to the University.  She was only wearing a new bra and underwear set—her favorite way to greet him, Jon had noticed—that she had bought at the Silk Street Market. Black and gold and lacy in a way that seemed like it would be too girly for her, and yet somehow it wasn’t.

“Oh, you know,” Jon shrugged, depositing his bags on the table.  “I like it when they’re experienced. Makes it more fun, you know?”

“Is that all I am to you?” she asked, “Some old bag who’s had a lot of sex with a lot of men so you get to reap the benefits?”

Jon raised his eyebrows, “Is that really what you think?” he replied.

She was smirking, and Jon knew she wasn’t actually annoyed at him.  She was just playing with him, playing with her food the way that Ghost did when he knocked kibble from his bowl so he could chase it over the kitchen.

“I don’t really know what to think,” she shrugged.  “I just know that you’re still wearing clothes.  I thought we’d reached an understanding about that.”

“Had we?” Jon asked. He crossed over to her, standing very close, but not touching her.  He couldn’t tell if he could actually feel the heat rolling off her bare skin, or if it was just his imagination.  “I don’t remember that discussion.”

“It wasn’t really a discussion,” she replied dryly, “so much as a fact that whenever you come over here, I make you take your clothes off.”

“Is that all I am to you?  A boy-toy who’ll do your bidding?” He felt a smile playing on his lips too, and Asha’s grin was positively predatory as she locked eyes with him.

“Yes, actually.”

“Well, that’s not going to fly for me,” he replied and with one hand reached out and unhooked the back of her bra.

She raised her eyebrows at him as she let it fall to the ground.  “The benefits of dating older women,” he said casually as he placed his hands on her hips and steered her back towards the bed, “is that they don’t really tolerate two handed wrestling with a bra.  So you learn that it’s not actually so hard as all that.”

“You know, Jon, I don’t think I’ve ever felt more seduced by you,” Asha teased.

“That so?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I have some more work cut out for me.”  He sat her down on the bed, and she automatically reached for his belt, but he pushed her shoulders back so that she was lying on the bed, her legs hanging off the edge.  He ran the tips of his fingers up her thighs.

“That’s weak and you know it,” she said to him.  “You know better than to do that gentle shit with me.”

But he didn’t stop. He just kept tracing circles on the soft skin of her upper thighs.  She propped herself up on her elbows, raising her eyebrows at him. He raised his eyebrows back at her and reached up and pushed her back down, then—for good measure—tweaked her nipples.  Whatever she was saying, they were pebbling, and Asha wasn’t one to get cold easily. “See,” he said softly, “I don’t think for a second that’s true—but…if you feel that way.” He reached behind him for the bra and used it to tie Asha’s hands to the top of the bed.

“If this breaks I’ll kill you,” she muttered.

“Well, you’ll have to keep very still, won’t you?  Because I doubt very much that you’d like doing that,” he said.

“How would you know?”

He slid two fingers underneath the fabric of her underwear, feeling warm and slick on his knuckles, and Asha inhaled sharply at the contact.  Jon smirked and he tugged them down her legs.  “Gut instinct,” he shrugged.

She was so beautiful, he thought, looking at her laid bare before him.  He ran a single finger along her folds, feeling the way that the skin changed texture as her short dark hair faded away into the pink skin that was puffing out, waiting for him to do something with it. He glanced up at her. Her eyes were closed, her lips parted and her dark brown nipples as stiff as he’d ever seen them. It was quite the sight, and he felt his own blood warming in his groin, flesh stiffening in his pants as he slid a finger into Asha, finding moisture and pulling it loose to circle her clit.

She gasped.

“The thing about experienced girls,” Jon said, “Is that they know what they like and teach you.”

“Hey Jon?”

“Yes?”

“Shut up about your ex-girlfriends.”  Asha was smiling, and he felt her hips shifting against his finger, rubbing her warm flesh against his hand.

He pressed a kiss to her inner thigh as his finger continued to circle her clit lightly, kissing his way up, and up and up and Asha moaned when he replaced his finger with his tongue.

“Fuck, Jon—”

“That is rather what I was aiming for,” Jon murmured into her, feeling the way his own lips buzzed against her skin.  She wriggled underneath him.  “Ah, ah. Be careful.  You don’t want to break that bra.”

“Fuck you,” she replied, letting loose a breathy laugh.

“Maybe in a bit.” _Most definitely in a bit_ , he thought, because his dick was twitching in his pants, and he knew that he would definitely need to be inside her soon. Fuck, he probably wouldn’t untie her.  He’d make her cum and then…

He licked, tasting her on his tongue.  She hadn’t let him eat her out before.  She hadn’t been interested in it, or she hadn’t felt comfortable with it, or she hadn’t wanted it—he hadn’t known.  But she didn’t seem to be minding now, her hips circling against his lips in a motion opposite his tongue, her breath coming in short gasps and her flesh throbbing beneath his mouth.

“You taste,” he murmured, dropping his tongue down to lick all the way up her slit, “so fucking good.”

“I bet you say that to all the girls,” she replied unevenly, then gasped as he dipped two fingers into her.

“You told me to shut up about my ex-girlfriend,” Jon said, “so I did.”  He encircled her clit with his lips and sucked it as far into his mouth as it would go, his fingers curling into her, finding that spot that she’d liked when she’d had him fuck her from behind.

Asha didn’t have a witty response ready.  She was falling to pieces underneath him, a flush crawling up her chest as she gasped out his name and clamped around his fingers, her clit throbbing in his mouth. “Fuck, Jon.  Fuckkkk.”

He let go of her slowly, watching as she seemed to fall open on the bed, her legs splayed completely wide, her back no longer arched or even held at all—just limp on the bed. Her arms were hanging loosely from her bra and her eyes were closed, her nostrils flared and a dreamy little smile on her lips. 

Jon tugged off his t-shirt and pulled down his jeans and boxers in one go, crawling up the bed and kissing her on the lips.  She slid her tongue into his mouth.  “I do taste good,” she murmured.

“I wasn’t lying about that,” he said, easing his tip so that it rested just at her entrance.

“Good,” she said. She kissed him again and nudged her hips up against him and he slid into her and, god, she was so fucking wet. He couldn’t tell if she was actively gripping him, or if she was still riding the aftermath of the orgasm but her muscles were gently clenching around him as he thrust, and—oh god, it was too good…

“I didn’t know I could get you off that quickly,” she teased as he collapsed on top of her. “Or do you just enjoy me so much?”

“I don’t know if you’ve seen yourself tied up like that,” Jon murmured in her ear, pressing a kiss to the side of her neck as he lay there on top of her. 

“You’ll have to take a picture next time,” she said, wrapping her legs around him, and he kissed her again, feeling warmth circling his hips in her smooth, pale legs.

* * *

 

The next Saturday, Satin took Jon to the Great Wall.  It was a bleak day—chilly, and grey, and windy, but Jon didn’t care. He had heard it said that you could see the Great Wall from space.  He’d have to look that up later, but for the moment, he didn’t dwell on it.  It was hard to dwell on anything—not Asha or Arya or Robb or Theon or Sam—as he made his way up the stone steps—steps at uneven distances, and which were too smooth for comfort because of the number of people who had climbed them. The higher he climbed, the more he felt his blood sing. 

Looking out over the hills, he felt like he was standing on top of the world, like he was resting his feet, his hands, his mind on a history much richer than he even knew.

He was glad he was there with Satin—not Theon, and not even Asha.  Because Satin knew how to walk, and stare out over the miles and miles of earth sprawled out below them without saying a damn word.

* * *

 

“I’ve been sleeping with your sister.”  He didn’t know why he said it then of all times, while Theon was lying on the ground, drunk as fuck and blood still dripping from his lip.  Theon had gotten into another fight.  He seemed to be doing that a lot lately. This time, it had been with another American who hadn’t liked the way that Theon had smiled at him. His face had been unnerving as he’d punched Theon in the groin, and then in the face—not least because his eyes were the same pale grey eyes that Jon had.

Theon didn’t move—didn’t say anything, he just lay there on the ground, a few feet from where Jon sat cross-legged. 

“I’d hit you in the balls if I could move,” Theon said at last.  “What the fuck did you go and do that for?”

“She wanted me to,” he said truthfully, though even to his ears it sounded like he was trying to pin the blame on her.

Theon let out a bitter laugh.  “Why does everyone like you more than me?  Robb, my sister—everyone.  Even the girls I flirt with here think you’re hot.”

Jon didn’t know what to say.  What could you say to that?  “You’re kind of an asshole, Theon,” didn’t seem right, and “I don’t know,” seemed facetious.

But Theon, it seemed, didn’t expect an answer.  He just sighed.  “You’ll treat her well.  I mean, it’s not even a question.  It’s a fact.”

“Yeah. I will.”

It was funny—Theon hadn’t shed a tear when the man from the bar’s fist had connected with his jaw and a bit of his tooth had chipped.  But Jon saying three words made him start to cry.

* * *

 

“Have you eaten?”

Jon looked up from his laptop to see Satin poking his head around the doorframe of his room. Jon hadn’t realized that he’d left it ajar.

“Not yet,” Jon said, glancing at the clock.  It was past seven, and now that he’d realized how late it was, he felt his stomach grumbling.

“I was going to get some eggs and tomatoes.  Want to—hey!  Is that _Harry Potter_?  I didn’t know you were reading it in Chinese.”

“What?” Jon followed Satin’s gaze to the book that had lain untouched on his bookshelf for what felt like years now. “Yeah.  Yeah—I was trying to read it earlier this semester.”

“I _love_ _Harry Potter_!” Satin’s face was full of excitement.  Jon was surprised—on Satin’s birthday, he hadn’t shown any sign of recognition when Jon had brought it up, though in retrospect, that might have been because of the nature of that particular conversation. “Have you read them all?”

“Um—only since forever,” Jon grinned.

“How haven’t we talked about this?” Satin demanded.  “Because this is important.”

“Very important,” Jon replied seriously.  He stood up and grabbed his wallet and moments later, he and Satin were on their way downstairs, arguing loudly about Severus Snape and heroism.

* * *

 

“You fucking told Theon?” snapped Asha when the door to her hotel room swung open. She was fully clothed, and Jon knew he was in trouble.

“Yes,” said Jon. There was no point in denying it.

“Why the fuck did you do that?” she snapped.  “I thought we were having fun doing it on the sly.”

“I couldn’t not tell him.  I just…it felt wrong.”

“Wrong?” she spat. He’d never seen her so livid—never, not even when she got into rants about how globalization and westernization were the same thing.  “Since when have you cared about right and wrong?”

“Since _always_ ,” Jon snapped. What the fuck was that?

She crossed her arms and gritted her teeth and god did it make a terrifying figure. He wondered what it would be like to do business with her.  He had a shrewd suspicion that she always got what she wanted by sheer force of will. “So you just go and tell him we’re dating.”

“I never said dating.”

“Oh? Then what did you say? Courting?  Making love to?  Crying over like some little wussy shithead possessive—”

“I just said we were sleeping together.  He didn’t ask for more detail than that and I didn’t give it.  Don’t fucking leap to conclusions at me just because Theon did.  I don’t know what we are, but I know what we do.” Just because she was older or had started it all, or whatever certainly didn’t give her the right to flip a shit at him like this. Why was she even flipping a shit anyway?  So what—he’d told Theon.  It wasn’t as though Theon wouldn’t have been able to connect the dots if he’d paid attention for long enough.

She glared at him, but kept her mouth shut, arching one eyebrow and waiting for him to go on. “Just because I’m your lonely college boy fuck doesn’t mean I don’t still do what I need to do to be the person I need to be,” he said as calmly as he could.  “And if you think it doesn’t matter to me that I told him—I haven’t told my fucking cousin, who I tell everything to. I haven’t told a soul besides Theon.” _And Sam_ , he thought, but she didn’t need to know that.  Sam could keep his mouth shut, so it wasn’t going beyond Sam anyway.

“I don’t date people,” Asha said, and her voice was quiet, wispy almost, and just like that, her crossed arms went from defiance to self-protection.  “I don’t.  I don’t want kids, or marriage, I want to fucking do my fucking job and be fucking good at it.  I want to ride hard and fast, and fuck, and live.  I don’t want to get tied down.”

Jon bit back the immediate comment that she’d enjoyed being tied to her bed, but it didn’t seem productive.  Instead he said, “Asha—I’m twenty-one.  I don’t even know when I want to begin thinking about marriage or kids.”

She looked up at him, her eyes wide and shining.  “Sometimes I forget how young you are,” she murmured.  He rolled his eyes.  “I mean, not just physically, but like—every guy my age I try to date wants to fucking tame me.”

“Yeah. Stay wild.  I like it,” he sighed.  “But whatever it is we are—whatever it is we’re doing…I need clarity on it.” It hadn’t made sense until he’d said it, but suddenly, he knew it was the truth and he’d been avoiding it as long as he could, because he’d known, somewhere deep down, that Asha was just as afraid of this sort of thing as Theon.  “Because I can’t keep it a secret any longer.”

“Apparently,” she muttered angrily.

“You should have been the one to tell Theon, not me. He’s your brother, and he’s my friend, and if you don’t think that means he doesn’t deserve to know—”

“Yeah, yeah. I know.  I get it.  Fine.”  She crossed the room and pulled a beer out of her fridge.  “Want one?  We’re probably going to need it.”

Jon shook his head, but followed her to the couch. 

“I don’t date people,” she repeated.  “I fly around the world and end up in China six months of every year and I don’t fucking date. Who wants to date that?”

“Well, me, I suppose, but that’s a point for later, I guess,” Jon said.

She raised her eyebrows at him.  “You don’t want to date me.  I’m like…six years older than you.  You’ll find some young thing who’s hot and—“

“Hotter than you?” Jon asked, laughing.  “Do you really think I’m that shallow, anyway?”

“Well, fine then. You’ll find someone who’s in the same place as you physically, emotionally, whateverly and you’ll be back and you won’t be some lonely college boy fuck anymore so you won’t need me. And I’ll be away.”

“Sounds to me like you’re the one making excuses and not me,” he said slowly.  “Because I don’t think that’s true, for what it’s worth.”

Asha rolled her eyes. “Well, I do.  I’ve seen it before.  It’s better staying casual and here and not getting into—“

“So you’re writing me off, just because you’re scared I’ll leave you?  Or are you scared that I won’t?”

“Everyone always leaves, Jon.  I had three brothers and a father and more uncles than I can count sober.  Now I only have Theon.  If I didn’t have my mother to keep me centered, I’d probably fly screaming into the sun.”

Jon stared at her, then chuckled.  “And I was raised by my uncle because my mom up and died having me.  I see your issues and raise you mine. Your world falls away from you, I cling to mine because I’ve never had one.”

“Are we playing emotional chicken?  I think we’re playing emotional chicken,” Asha laughed.  She ran a finger along her eyebrow, her body curved against the back of the couch.  Jon cracked a grin, and they just smiled at each other for a moment.

“You don’t date people,” Jon said.  “So you fuck them and leave them, then?”

Asha sighed. “Usually.  It’s easier that way.”

“There’s no easy fix to that, I suppose,” Jon said wryly. 

Her eyes flickered between each of his, and she caught his turn of phrase.

“No,” she said easily.  “There’s not. Because I’m all kinds of fucked up.  But…maybe I could try fucking and not leaving.”

“So—what does that make it then?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Fuck buddy, sex-bro, I don’t give a shit.  But not girlfriend. I’m not a girlfriend, ok? Will that work?”  Her fingers were circling the mouth of her beer bottle, picking away at the label.

“Sex-bro?” he asked at last.

“Sex-bro,” she confirmed.   “Or boy-toy. As you please.”

“Sex-bro. Seems more equal.”

“Jon, in what world do you think this is an equal relationship?”

“Do I need to tie you up again?”

She laughed, and it wasn’t a nervous laugh.  It was a full-humored, bright laugh.

* * *

 

_Robb Stark: So, Theon says you’re dating his sister._

_Jon Snow: We don’t use that word.  I believe the term we’re using is “sex-bros.”_

_Robb Stark:…_

_Robb Stark: That sounds ideal, actually._

_Jon Snow: So far it’s good._

_Robb Stark: Will you keep sex-bro-ing when you get back?_

_Jon Snow: We’ll try, that’s for sure.  Who knows if it’ll work.  But we’re going to try._

_Robb Stark: Now Theon’s going to try extra hard to date Sansa, isn’t he?_

_Jon Snow: I thought she had a person?_

_Robb Stark: I have decided that if we don’t know who he is, he doesn’t exist in my head.  That’s the only way to handle it._

_Jon Snow: I think that’s denial._

_Robb Stark: I know.  Probably, right.  Agh. Fuck. Everyone should just stay in their corners._

_Jon Snow: Including you?_

_Robb Stark: Fuck off._

_Robb Stark: No, but really fuck off._

_Jon Snow: All right.  I just might.  Let me just go and see if the sex-bro is available._

_Robb Stark: That’s not what I meant, Jon._

_Robb Stark: Jon._

_Robb Stark: Jon?_

_Robb Stark: Fuck._


End file.
